Gunfight by Adam Winkler The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America

A provocative history that reveals how guns—not abortion, race, or religion—are at the heart of America's cultural divide.

Gunfight is a timely work examining America’s four-centuries-long political battle over gun control and the right to bear arms. In this definitive and provocative history, Adam Winkler reveals how guns—not abortion, race, or religion—are at the heart of America’s cultural divide. Using the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller—which invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation’s capital—as a springboard, Winkler brilliantly weaves together the dramatic stories of gun-rights advocates and gun-control lobbyists, providing often unexpected insights into the venomous debate that now cleaves our nation.

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been featured on CNN and in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Republic. A columnist for the Daily Beast, he lives in Los Angeles.

Publishers Weekly

Dismissing the extremist "gun nuts" and "gun grabbers" who have dominated the gun debate for decades, the author clearly shows that the right to bear arms and gun control have always coexisted in the U.S.âeven on the frontier where guns and gun regulation were widespread.

Los Angeles Times

As a contest of constitutional principles, Heller tested the question of whether the famously ambiguous 2nd Amendment ("A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed") protected militias and reached...

San Francisco Chronicle

He notes that "strong majorities of gun owners favor compromise when it comes to gun control," and he would welcome mandated gun safety courses, background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases, and bans at places such as campuses.

Annenberg Digital News

In “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” the constitutional law professor Adam Winkler tries to find a middle way to sober the debate between gun rights and gun control, with remarkable storytelling.

Reason Magazine

The American Conservative

David Frum quotes Rod’s recent blog post on gun crime in Baton Rouge in an op-ed for CNN entitled “America’s gun problem is not a race problem.” He doesn’t like the idea of dividing Americans into groups based on their disproportionate rates of gun crime:.

The Truth About Guns

Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

Key players are the Ku Klux Klan, a group originally formed in order to disarm blacks following the Civil War, and the National Rifle Association, a once-moderate organization focused on teaching safe gun use and supportive of reasonable gun control laws.